I do this too - my partner and I share most expenses - and the simple way is to create for your girlfriend an assets account (if she generally pays after the fact) or a liabilities account (if she generally pays ahead of time), and then to use the SQL client to generate a journal of that account to list all that was posted and compute the current balance (ours gets uploaded to a Google Sheets doc where she can review it for errors or unexpected items). When your girlfriend/roommate makes transfers to pay for those shared expenses incurred on your side, you post the payment against that account. It's really convenient to have that account as you can use it for any other purpose, e.g., transfers, gifts, etc. "I'll just put it on your account," you can say. It's purely an electronic transaction between the two of you; the actual reconciliation is a separate concern.
The other side of this coin is a bit more complicated though. I'm referring to the expenses which she pays for and which you do have to transfer to her. You can use the same account, but you need to find a way for her to communicate those expenses to you, so you can reduce the account accordingly. We use a Google Sheets document that she updates, and I simply update my corresponding transactions from that doc (I haven't automated getting all the details from it yet to create transactions, but it's doable). One challenge, you may find, is that your partner forgets to update the doc (and therefore doesn't always get the corresponding reimbursement). That's an ongoing issue; I have no solution for it other than to remind. On Sun, Dec 17, 2017 at 9:27 AM, <adde.f...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hey, > > I'm trying to figure out a good simple strategy that allows me to track > expenses that I share with my girlfriend. We live together and we have two > types of shared expenses: the ones for our apartment like rent and > utilities and the ones where usually I pay for something for the both of us. > > For the first type of transactions I don't care about the balance between > us, she pays a fixed amount into my account from which most bills go out > from each month. I do however care about having accurate tracking of these > expenses so I can tell what our fixed monthly expenses are. For example, I > want the full rent and cost of all the utilities to show up among my > expenses. At the moment I'm tracking this using regular expense accounts > which I create posts against whenever I pay our rent for example. I post > the transactions where my girlfriend sends me the fixed amount as a special > income account and I'm pretty happy with this solution (I think). > > I currently have no solution that I'm happy with for the second type of > transactions. These transactions usually occur at an irregular basis and > the amounts vary wildly and I always care about maintaining some sort of > balance but whether I care about tracking the full value to an expense > account or not varies. For example, if I pay for a pair of shoes she wants > because she doesn't have any money in the currency then I'd want to keep > track of the balance she owes me but not the expense. However if we go and > buy Christmas decorations and I pay then I'd want to record the full amount > to an expense account and half of the amount to an account that represents > the money my girlfriend owes me. Preferably I'd like to track the balance > between me and my girlfriend as an asset account as that to me seems like > the quickest way to at a glance tell the status between us (but I may be > wrong). > > I was playing around with using an intermediate liability account (see > bellow) and I think I could calculate the balance between us with a query > but since we already have a history and I just started using beancount I > have no account to post the current balance against and future payments to > balance this would be harder to track without an asset account? > > 2017-11-26 * "Christmas" > Expenses:Home:Decoration 30 GBP > Liabilities:Shared -30 GBP > > 2017-11-26 * "Christmas" > Liabilities:Shared 30 GBP > Liabilities:Amex -30 GBP > > Does anyone have any idea on how to track this in a neat way, preferably > without plugins. And yes I've read the expense sharing cookbok but didn't > see any solution I was perfectly happy with :). > > Cheers! > Andreas > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Beancount" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/ > msgid/beancount/4b167c55-e651-4d93-a2a1-cebd41813a59%40googlegroups.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/4b167c55-e651-4d93-a2a1-cebd41813a59%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Beancount" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to beancount+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to beancount@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/beancount/CAK21%2BhP3DgZOr62enBFA%2ByyW68bdGYHMh%3DpfqfgKhc5WHF9VZA%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
